Every month I get three emails from Bell, one from Customer Service and 2 from mobility.confirmation.
The one from Customer Service has the subject “Your e-bill is ready” starts out (in plain text) “Hello, Your Bell Mobility e-bill is ready. To see your bill on our secure Web site, complete the following steps.” and it carries on to describe how to log in to my account.
The next one, from mobility.confirmation has the subject “Bell Mobility eBill Notification”. This is an HTML message with a two-column layout, links to log in to my account, the total due this month, and my phone number. The main heading is “Your eBill is ready.”
And if that weren’t enough, I get a third one (second from mobility.confirmation) inviting me to sign up for eCare. Subject “eCare registration information”, again an HTML 2-column message this time inviting me to “Register to eCare” and giving me the steps to do so.
My billing date is the 16th (I think) and I get these messages in the order I described them. This month I got them on the 18th, the 20th and the 21st.
Now, that has been naggingly annoying for some six months or so. Please make it stop!!
I have been ignoring it actually, but the background annoyance has always been there. Well, I called about it today because not only did I get the third (confusing) email today, but also a text message informing me that my bill is ready. That was new! But I started to wonder if my last payment had not gone through. Was I behind? Why all the effort on Bell’s part? So, I called to find out.
Poor agents… they mean well, but they have no clue. I bit my tongue when she sent me off with “what you have to do is..” rather than “here’s how I can help you..”. What “I had to do” was go to bell.ca/contactus and use their fancy form to tell the people who handle the website (and the email, and the texts) about the issue. Okay, fine, whatever.
So, I write a quick message, include my customer info, click submit, and get an error message. “The following information is missing or incorrect. Check your entry and try again. Account Number.” But of course…. :) The Account Number, as far as I could tell, looked just fine!
I phoned back, this time asking for just a plain old email address of “the people who handle the website (and the email, and the texts)” so I could send them my original problem and a screen shot of this error message and Account Number field filled in. I got another agent, explained what was happening, and got put me on hold (nothing good like Dido or anything playing). She came back and, wouldn’t you know it, she started explaining to me the process of “what I had to do” was go to bell.ca/contactus and use their fancy form to tell the people who handle the website (and the email, and the texts) about the issue!
Um, what is the appropriate resonse here? I am SURE that I have no idea! Well, I was nice (enough). I think.
Poor agents. They mean well, I know they do.
So, she put me on hold again. I was escalated to another dude. Nice guy. He listened patiently. I think he absorbed most of it, but I can’t be sure. He put me on hold too. I waited for a while, smiling sardonically, as I drafted this post in my head. I snapped out of it when I heard the line click, and I was again, ready to be civil. And then I hear, “Thank you for calling Bell. My name is Roger. How may I be of assistance today?”
I laughed hard for about 30 seconds, and then filled the guy in.
He laughed too.
So, anyway, here I am writing this. Oh, and while doing that, I actually went and tinkered with the Account Number. I would have liked to see the look of horror on my face when I clicked in the field and and saw that there was a trailing blank space. I shuddered, hit backspace, and then submit… Of course, it worked.
Do I feel stupid? (no) Honestly? (yes) Should I? (absolutely not) Here’s a tip for the “engineers” at bell.ca…. trimming whitespace has been around for a while. You might consider it as a valuable input validation aid. It might just save you, your tech “support” team, and your customers some undue pain and suffering.
Incidentally, I still need the three message per month thing solved too.
